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CIEDP chooses 3 districts for probe

Teams will reach Kanchanpur, Makwanpur and Jhapa to get details from family and to collect ante-mortem data

Feb 25, 2018-Two weeks after its second one-year tenure extension, the Commission of Investigation on Enforced Disappeared Persons is starting the first phase of detailed investigation into the cases of disappeared persons.

Six teams of the commission are visiting three districts, where they will start detailed probe into some 150 complaints. They will reach Kanchanpur, Makwanpur and Jhapa to record details from family members and to collect ante-mortem data on conflict victims. The 23-page form will record every available information on disappeared persons, evidence of disappearance and witnesses if any. The teams will also ask victims’ families for their choice of reparation scheme.

“We’ll start recording statements from the perpetrators and conduct public hearing for evidence once the first phase of detailed investigation is over,” said IB Gurung, a member of the commission. Despite pressure from victims’ families and international communities, two transitional justice bodies have yet to complete probe into a single case of war-era human rights violation and crime against humanity.

The CIEDP, formed on February 9, 2015, is looking into war-era cases of disappearance both by state actors and the erstwhile Maoist rebels during the 1996-2006 insurgency. As many as 3,093 complaints have been filed at the CIEDP. The commission has shortlisted 2,300 “genuine cases” for investigation.

Some of the complaints filed at the CIEDP are said to be unrelated to the insurgency while others fall under the preview of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).

A report of the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights says 1,300 people have been missing from the decade-long Maoist insurgency. The numbers of complaints, however, are double the UN figures.

In the lack of timely investigation into cases of disappearance, family members are facing problems even in the transfer of property. Hundreds of family members of enforced disappeared persons have been pleading for making public the status of their relatives, dead or alive. The government and the then-revolutionaries, while signing the Comprehensive Peace Accord in 2006, had agreed to make public the whereabouts of disappeared persons within 60 days.

However, more than a decade since the deal, there is no tangible progress in investigation.

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